The present invention relates to a process for making aerated fruit, vegetable or spicy foods. More particularly, the present invention provides an aerated or whipped food product that finds many useful applications including use as a dessert or for enriching, garnishing or filling ready-to-eat foods, such as desserts, sherbet, yogurt, baked goods, after meal snacks, and the like.
By the aeration of such foods with air or gases such as nitrogen, a more agreeable and a pleasant feel is achieved by means of a light, frothy consistency, and wherein also the fruit aromas become concentrated in the air bubbles resulting in more pronounced organoleptic effect, the volume is increased and the weight of the food is proportionally reduced, so that a lower-calorie effect is achieved.
In West German Laid-Open Application No. 2,147,033, low calorie garnishes, spreads and frozen desserts have been considered as imitations of oily, fat-containing spreads such as butter, margarine, cheese or dips, frozen desserts, including ice cream and sorbet as well as puddings, glazes, sauces and the like. Foodstuffs of this type are not of high nutritional value, but serve to satisfy the pleasure of eating in unlimited quantities, when such is desired or dietetically necessary. According to the patent, they represent aqueous aerated products of composition up to 55 weight percent of nonaqueous constituents, such as fructose, a maximum of 5% of fat, 0.33 to 7.5 weight percent of a special polyglycerol fatty ester and 0.2 to 3 weight percent of hydrophilic colloids and are predominantly oily imitations.
The formulations therein which provide the materials for making oily imitations of foods at home or for making low calorie cakes, must be processed in one and even in two stages at high temperatures, which are to be maintained within narrow tolerances. It has been found that, in the use of polyglycerol fatty esters, structure stability of relatively long duration can not be achieved, but instead a negative influence is exerted, leading to saponification of the emulsifier and thus resulting in complete loss of the aeration property in addition to also having a strongly negative organoleptic influence on the product. The prior art does not suggest producing aerated food preparations having the properties of aerated foods according to the objective of the present invention.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,556,810 which discloses making edible dessert gel, a suitable gelling agent is proposed for increasing the strength and the consistency as well as for preventing syneresis, but there is no indication or teaching directed to producing aerated fruit foods, which is the object of the present invention.
The aeration of foods has been employed for obtaining one or more of the above properties frequently for whipped creams, albumin-sugar aerated foods, which are often referred to as meringues, sherbet, puddings and similarly prepared mixed foods, to which natural fruit flavorings or substances identical in nature thereto have been added in some cases.
However, to achieve the desired taste quality and degree of aeration as well as relatively stable structure, it has heretofore been necessary in this connection to use high percentage contents of albumin, sugar and fats as illustrated by whipped cream and cream-filled chocolate cakes. These sweet foods or desserts presented as after-meals or between-meals snacks represent very rich foods. The high amount of calories of these foods is undesirable, but are tolerated because of lack of awareness of less-rich desserts having the desired properties, insofar as such desserts are considered to enhance and complete a meal.
A further disadvantage is that such foods, because of their fat-sugar-albumin or fat-sugar contents, are difficult to digest, since they often cause fermentation processes during metabolism.
Moreover, milk products such as curd, yogurt or the like are to an increasing degree being aerated and sold in cups with fruit products such as fruit bases added to improve the taste as well as to increase their appeal. However, these fruit products lack the special advantages of aeration, in particular, the increase in volume, and in order for these fruit constituents to meet the desired purpose, relatively large amounts thereof must be added, which increases the cost.
Finally, such aerated milk products with appropriate fruit proportions are also processed to homogeneous mixtures and also sold in cups, but the same stated disadvantages exist.